“No,” US President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday as they traveled with him aboard Air Force One to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, when asked how much truth there was in two recent reports claiming that a US military operation in Venezuela was imminent. Is it true that Trump has decided to order such an attack? “No, it’s not true,” he said, in a more laconic style than usual.

Trump thus put in quarantine the theory that he is willing to cross another Rubicon by launching an offensive in Venezuelan territory against targets, both civilian and military, allegedly linked to drug trafficking.

On Thursday, thanks to a report in The Wall Street Journal, it was revealed that the Pentagon had identified targets on Venezuelan soil, including ports and airports under military control, which Washington accuses of being linked to drug cartels, especially the Cartel of the Suns. Beyond the fight against drug trafficking, this decision to escalate the offensive against Caracas would be interpreted in the same way as previous attacks in international waters against alleged drug-trafficking boats: as pressure tactics against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to hasten the fall of the Chavista regime.

This Friday, the Miami Herald reported that the next step could be “a matter of days or hours.” A White House spokeswoman later denied this, saying that such reports could not be from “anonymous sources” because only one person is authorized to provide them: “the President of the United States.”

"There are reports that you are considering strikes within Venezuela. Is that true?"@POTUS: "No, it's not true."

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 31, 2025

An operation of this magnitude would represent an escalation in US foreign policy in Latin America and would resurrect the worst specters of decades of Washington's interventionism in the region. The path, certainly, seems to be leading in that direction: for the past two months, the US military has launched 15 extrajudicial attacks against 16 vessels (including a submarine) allegedly involved in drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific. At least 61 people have been killed in these operations.

Rewards

The White House accuses the Maduro government of leading a criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking. Last August, US authorities doubled to $50 million the reward they are offering for any information leading to the capture of the Venezuelan president, who last year, according to most of the international community, stole the elections from the opposition, led by recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado. An additional $25 million is offered for some of Maduro's lieutenants, such as Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López.

While attacks continued against the alleged drug-running boats, whose crews—whose identities and evidence of their involvement in any crime remain unknown—Trump considers members of an army that has declared war on his country by flooding it with fentanyl and cocaine, the United States ordered an unprecedented military deployment. It began last August.

A dozen warships, including a nuclear submarine, and 10,000 troops have moved into the area of influence of Southern Command. Last Friday, Trump ordered the deployment of the largest and most modern aircraft carrier in the fleet, the Gerald Ford, to the Caribbean. The warship, whose crew numbers more than 5,000 sailors, was in Europe and had passed through the Strait of Gibraltar at the time of its deployment. It is expected to arrive in the area early next week.

According to information from the Journal, the attacks that Trump now denies would be carried out from the air and with very precise targets.

Friday's firm refusal stirred up memories in Washington of the US attack on three uranium enrichment and storage facilities in Iran last June.

Then, it was the same New York newspaper that reported the attack was imminent. The US president later refused to clarify whether these plans were true and went, as he had done this time, to play golf. On Saturday, bombs fell on the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan bases.